A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder is Perfectly Right

There are two sorts of people in the world. Those who are neat and orderly, and those who actually get things done. At least, that is the premise of a new book by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman, called A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder. They maintain that the time and effort that go into maintaining order in any situation is not worth it.

Mr. Freedman told Reuters, “We think that being more organized and ordered and neat is a good thing and it turns out, that's not always the case. Most of us are messy, and most of us are messy at a level that works very, very well for us. In most cases, if we got a lot neater and more organized, we would be less effective.” He further observed, “People who are really, really neat, between what it takes to be really neat at the office and at home, typically will spend anywhere from an hour to four hours a day just organizing and neatening.” Even at minimum wage, that adds up.

In addition, there is a benefit to having to spend a moment or two looking for things. “You discover things that, if you had filed things or containerized them or purged them, you never would have seen them again. It becomes a natural reminder system.” For example, one is reminded of where one’s shoes are because they are in the middle of the floor and one must walk past them to get to the sock drawer.

Naturally, there are people who believe otherwise (what professionals would call “evil”). The Freedman and Abrahamson book has been derided by the National Association of Professional Organizers (bet that’s a fun annual convention). Barry Izsak, head of NAPO, argues, “The bottom line is, the average person feels negatively affected by disorganization in many ways: increased stress, missed deadlines, lost opportunities, that sinking, drowning feeling. For the average person, disorganization and chaos simply doesn’t feel good.”

Whenever there is a dispute among people over such matters, it is best to defer to scientific opinion. Rudolph Clausius, a nineteenth-century German physicist, explained the second law of thermodynamics by saying, “The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.” That is, no matter how hard one works at keeping a neat desk, the laws of physics predispose it to messiness. One can either expend energy keeping it neat, or expend energy accomplishing other things, and penicillin didn’t come from a clean Petri dish.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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